Tonatiuh Discusses the Impact of the Original Film (Exclusive)

The 2025 movie musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna and Tonatiuh, is coming soon to remind audiences of the power of queerness, escapism and living one’s truth in the face of political oppression. The 1985 film starring Sônia Braga, Raul Julia and William Hurt — which celebrates its 40th anniversary on July 26 — did the same, and when queer representation was far more scarce.

“That is right at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and people were screaming, ‘Gay cancer!’” Tonatiuh, 30, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “People were quite literally saying this is God’s punishment for gay individuals. There were so many atrocities that our community was facing.”

The actor-activist, who identifies as queer and uses he/they pronouns, says that “just 15 years after the beginning of the queer revolution in the United States” with New York’s Stonewall riots, the Héctor Babenco-directed Kiss of the Spider Woman “served its purpose in creating space for our community on a major platform.” 

The Brazil-set 1985 film also introduced many moviegoers to their first openly gay character with the late Hurt’s Oscar-winning performance as Luis Molina. “For a man of his stature and his positioning at that time to play such a ‘deviant’ — and I put that in quotes, because to me it’s just a lived experience and it’s a human experience — at the time it was seen as such a radical ground-shaking,” says the Carry-On star. “Who would do that to their brand? I think it was so bold.”

It was Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel about Argentinian political prisoners dreaming up a better life within prison that has inspired the 1985 movie, the subsequent hit Broadway musical from Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, and now Bill Condon’s 2025 big-screen adaptation of that musical starring Lopez, 56, in the titular role. 

The “bold and brave” Héctor Babenco-directed Kiss of the Spider Woman “was daring in a way that our film is,” explains Tonatiuh. “We’re daring but in a different, timely way.” While the 1985 film was made relevant by relocating from Argentina to Brazil amid that country’s military dictatorship, the 2025 film arrives amid “attacks on trans individuals [and] queer individuals and censorship on queer media,” he says. 

“We’re almost holding the frontier,” adds Tonatiuh. “But I feel like that [1985] movie was really solidifying, setting the frontier. And we’re holding it… It’s important for us to hold that ground and remind people of the beauty and the pride and the right to joy that queers and immigrants and everybody has.”

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Speaking on behalf of Lopez, Luna, Condon and the rest of the new Kiss of the Spider Woman team, Tonatiuh calls the upcoming film “such a passion project and so full of love” and “a perfect mix of escapism and reality.” 

Personally, he adds, “I had the opportunity to tell such a complex story from so many different perspectives of the gender spectrum… We live in a time and I work in an industry where my own duality, my own dual spiritness, my own expression of gender, was forced to be in boxes. And I was explicitly told that who I was was going to get in the way of me having the career successes that I wanted.”

Playing “humanity on the entire spectrum” with Luis Molina, as Hurt before him, was “healing,” says Tonatiuh. “At the end of the day, I’m a spirit in a body, and how I express it is another form of my art form. And I hope that other individuals who feel that feel seen.”

The movie musical Kiss of the Spider Woman is in theaters Oct. 10.